Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Munakata family pet)

Of all the people whom Mai might want to come knocking on her door at eight in the evening while she was enjoying movie night with her now-official boyfriends, Shiho Munakata was scraping the bottom of the list, somewhere just below a cluster of plague-infected zombies and just above Nagi.

(She could have set the zombies on fire and pushed them off the balcony, after all, which would have been rude to do to Shiho.)

"Shiho, what are you—"

"Oniiiiichaaaaan!" Shiho wailed, hurling herself past Mai without even bothering to attempt any ineffectual barbs and instead making a beeline for Tate. "You have to help me!"

Yatagarasu, Shiho's three-eyed crow, flapped in after her, a long strip of fabric with—was that salmon polka dots on chartreuse?—clutched in his beak.

Tate, for his part, proved that his reflexes were still up to their kendo squad days and his judgment about what to allow women who were not his girlfriend to do had actually improved by catching Shiho by the shoulders before she could fling herself into his arms.

"Shiho, you can't just come barging in like this," he said.

"Now, now," said Reito Kanzaki, Mai's other boyfriend. "It looks like she's genuinely in need of help."

Tate glowered at him. Reito had the kind of expertise in sneaky that suited his former role as the vessel for an evil god-like alien entity. He might have spoken up in Shiho's favor to try to make Tate seem heartless in Mai's eyes and so score points. Or he might have been subtly encouraging Shiho to continue to interfere. Or he might legitimately have meant what he said without any subtext at all, given that The Smirker was still there because he'd spent the past year and a half being a genuinely good boyfriend to Mai.

His innocently placid smile, of course, gave nothing away. So Tate instead looked at Shiho, and he had to admit that the distraught expression and the tears running down her cheeks did look very real and not at all put on.

He also noticed that she was wearing a bright green dress with a pink sash the same shade as her hair, which dress featured shoulder pads straight out of a historical fashion magazine. She could put an eye (or maybe a spleen, given her height) out with one of those.

"Shiho, calm down; tell me what's wrong," he said, trying to be gentler about it.

"It's terrible!" Shiho wailed. "You have to help me!"

Tate dug out a handkerchief and handed it to her.

"Go on, blow."

She wiped her eyes first, then put the handkerchief to her nose and let fly with a loud honk. Thankfully, although Yatagarasu was a crow and Kagatsuchi at least half-phoenix, there were no geese present to drown in bitter envy.

"Thank you," she mumbled.

"Now tell us what's wrong and we'll see how we can help," Mai said. She wasn't Shiho's biggest fan (see also the zombie comparison), but she was Mai; "mom friend" was in her blood.

"It's Nina's party!" Shiho wailed. "It's tonight, and I can't get that tied!" She pointed at the strip of silk in Yatagarasu's beak. Mai had indeed been correct; it was genuinely chartreuse with salmon-pink polka dots.

"Your ribbon? But how do I—?"

"It's not a ribbon," Reito said, leaning over to get a better look. "I think it's a tie. Probably a bow tie, to judge by the length and the lack of tapered ends."

"That's right. None of the other girls knew how to tie one, but Arika suggested that a boy might know! So I was sure you could save me, oniichan!"

"If he can't, I'll be happy to," Reito said. Was he showing Tate up with his superior skill in the gentlemanly arts? Trying to win points with Mai by helping usher Shiho out the door? Genuinely being helpful? Owned stock in the pharmaceutical company that made the headache medicine Tate would need after trying to figure out his co-boyfriend's motives?

"Why do you need a bow tie, though?" Mai said, treading where others might fear to inquire. "Your dress has a high neckline that looks good without any ornamentation." She did not mention the shoulder pads, perhaps in the hope that some horrors only existed when one acknowledged them.

Shiho looked at her in confusion.

"It's not for me; it's for Yatagarasu," she said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"That explains why it matches the color scheme of your dress," Reito said. "And I presume the shoulder pads"—no, don't call them by name!—"are so he can perch comfortably without hurting your shoulder?"

"Exactly!"

In all fairness, "landing pad for a large bird" was a better reason for those things to exist than 1980s fashion designers had ever been able to offer, so Shiho scored a point somewhere.

"So why will he be wearing a bow tie?" Tate got around to the main question.

"Well, I don't want him to be outshined by all the other girls' crows, obviously."

This time it was all three of Shiho's audience who shared looks of confusion. Mai and Reito both silently prompted Tate, as the one with the long-standing relationship with Shiho, to be the one to ask.

"Okay, so you're saying that all the girls going to Nina's party will have crows with them?"

"Of course they will. Nina specified that it was caws-ual dress."

~X X X~

A/N: I regret nothing.